


But Two Beneath the Sky

by SylvanWitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, fairytale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:59:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Grandfather says...there was once a great hunter...and this hunter had two sons.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Two Beneath the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> This was my entry for the spncw_fairytale fest, originally posted 28 March 2008. I chose to write a variation on Andrew Lang's "The Boy and the Wolves," which is taken from an unidentified Native American tale. Obviously, I've taken some liberties with the original version of the tale.
> 
> The title of this story is taken from an anonymous Native American poem called "The Hunters" that can be found here. You don't need to read either Lang or the poem to read my story, but it can't hurt.

Grandfather says…

 

Grandfather is fond of stories.  He tells us always the same way, we on the braided rug at his feet, our eyes on his scarred hands, which shake with the palsy of old age.  His eyes are milky, dulled by time, sightless.  I would never tell him this, but sometimes they make me shiver.  Mother says that Grandfather used to have the eyes of a cat and could see things that other men miss, but I don’t like when Mother talks of old times.  Her eyes then don’t see us, either, anymore than Grandfather’s do.

 

_There once was a great hunter, a fearless man who tracked and killed evil things, like the werewolves you hear sometimes howling from the mountaintops._

 

Mother tsks from the kitchen.  “Grandfather,” (for that is all I have ever heard him called, though he’s no one’s grandfather, as far as I know) she chides, “Don’t scare them into thinking wolves are evil.”  Grandfather smirks and continues like she hadn’t said anything at all.

 

_This hunter had two sons, both strong young men, fearless and brave like their father.  They lived in a cabin in the woods on the edge of the last great forest of the world.  Sometimes, the father would go into the forest alone, and in the night the brothers in their beds would hear the screams of dying things.  The next day, the hunter would return to show his trophies of the hunt:  wounds, and bloodied clothes, and, once or twice, a pelt that he burned in a fire in the yard and that stank up the clearing for days._

_But even when the father left for more than a night, even when he left for many nights together, the brothers were not afraid and were not lonely, for they had each other._

_The great hunter had given the older brother, Dean, a single, solemn instruction, to watch over and protect his younger brother, Sam._

“Was Sam special?” Gene asks.  Gene is always asking questions, which is sometimes really annoying.  But this time, it’s okay, because it’s the question that was supposed to be asked.  This isn’t the first time we’re hearing this story.

_When he was very, very young, Sam had been marked by the same evil that had killed their mother, and on his back he bore a scar in the shape of a wolf’s paw.  Sometimes, Dean would put his hand there, over the scar, and marvel at how large a paw it was.  No wolf in the wild ever grew that big, he knew.  Sam would only smile at Dean’s touch and then shiver in closer to his brother’s hot body._

_Dean took his duty seriously.  He was a good son.  He never left Sam alone when their father was away hunting in the forest, and he always took care to train Sam to protect himself, too._

_Together, they grew up strong and proud, brothers under the big trees, under the wide sky, under the stars that speckled the night with light, glittering beside a wolf’s-eye moon._

_Sometimes when Dad was gone in the night, Sam would cry out in his sleep, and Dean would creep into his brother’s bed to comfort him.  Those nights, the scar on Sam’s back would seem to shudder under Dean’s hand, and Dean, with both fear and wonder, would stroke his hand just so over the pulsing mark.  Sam would sigh beneath his brother’s touch and be still once more._

_This went on as is the way of things for a long time, the great hunter leaving his sons for longer and longer times, coming home only at greater intervals and with deeper marks around his mouth and eyes, with more scars on his slowly-bending body._

_The great hunter would never tell his sons what happened on these hunts, but it was clear that something had changed in the forest.  More evil was coming every day, and though the brothers hunted evil close to home, and the father hunted evil further away, still evil grew._

_One day, the great hunter did not come home at all._

_The brothers sought him out, calling through the forest.  Their voices echoed back at them, mocking.  There was in the big trees an ominous feeling, as though great eyes of evil were staring at them always.  They shuddered beneath branches that used to laugh in the sunlight, and their steps grew stealthy as their breath grew short._

_Eventually, they found their father.  He was old, older than his days, and his breath was labored in his chest.  He had only a few breaths left, Dean knew, and though it hurt his heart, he had to leave his father there, for the great hunter had given his final order—for Dean to watch out for Sam and never leave him alone, especially now that evil was growing greater every moment._

_Dean promised his dying father that he would always be with his brother, and then he left his father a gun with a single, special bullet, and retreated with Sam back the way they had come._

_The sound that shouted out beneath the trees then was awful, and Dean had to clench his fists to keep from clapping them over his ears._

_Sam cried, and Dean touched that place on his brother’s back, and Sam, for the first time, said, “No.”_

_After that, things changed._

_The brothers still hunted, but the hunting was harder.  More and more often, the evil was stronger than they had expected.  More and more often, they had to leave things unfinished.  Dean grew exhausted, with a darkness beneath his eyes that was like his father’s own._

_Sam, though, grew stronger instead._

_Every evil thing they killed made him exult, until sometimes Dean did not know the man standing beside him was Sam at all._

_Still, Dean would not stop watching out for Sam._

_One day, while they bathed in the river to clean their skin of the blood of an evil creature, Dean saw that the mark on Sam’s back seemed larger._

_He reached out a hand, and even though his brother had asked him to stop, Dean couldn’t help but lay his palm over the mark, measuring as he had since he was a boy the scar that had been born of fire._

_It had grown._

_Sam looked at Dean, then, and Dean saw in Sam’s eyes something that he had never noticed before._

_For the first time, Dean was afraid._

_But he was his father’s son, and he obeyed his father’s final words._

_And then, as is also the way of these things, they came up against an evil greater still than any other they had ever encountered.  Dean wanted Sam to stay behind.  Lately, Sam had been behaving strangely, and Dean did not want his brother in harm’s way, so close to something so evil.  But Sam only laughed and came along, and Dean let him._

_The evil would not be banished._

_They fought it through the day under a sky grey with clouds._

_They fought it through the twilight, when rain began to ripple the leaves over their heads._

_They fought it through the night, as thunder rumbled the ground beneath their feet and lightning tore holes in the darkness around them._

_Morning of the next day dawned, and still the battle raged.  Just as it seemed that they would fail, that Dean would fall beneath the onslaught of evil, Sam stopped and stared at the evil creature and smiled a terrible smile._

_And then, gloating and gleeful, Sam unleashed a beast of his own, let loose with all his strength the things he’d kept in check.  He let his brother see who he truly was, and Dean knew he’d been right to be afraid._

_This was not his brother but the wolf that had marked him all those years ago.  This was not the Sam he’d promised to protect._

_He’d failed his father, had let Sam fall._

_But he could not abandon Sam to the fate that the mark on his back had bound him to all those years ago, when he was but an innocent babe.  So Dean stayed._

_The cabin in the clearing in the forest at the edge of the world grew lonely for Dean, who did not know his brother half the time.  Sometimes, rare and growing rarer, Sam would smile out of eyes Dean recognized.  But mostly, he was someone else._

_Finally, because he could no longer live with what Sam was, Dean knew he had to seek help.  There was a sorcerer his father had once spoken of who lived beyond the forest’s edge, and though Dean had never ventured into the world of regular men, he knew he had no choice now._

_Despite what his father had said, Dean knew he had to go.  He hated to leave Sam, since it was only his voice that could sometimes bring his brother back into his eyes.  But he had no hope otherwise, and so one day he set off, telling Sam only that he would be back._

_“Stay here,” he told his brother.  “I will come for you.”_

_And laying a kiss on his brother’s brow, and ignoring the way his brother’s eyes shaded yellow in the morning light, Dean left._

“He shouldn’ta done that,” Allie says. She’s the littlest and doesn’t know not to interrupt Grandfather at this part of the story.  Because she’s the littlest, Grandfather lets her, though, and he nods, “You’re right,” he says.  “Dean shouldn’t have left his little brother.”

 

_Dean was gone a long time.  The sorcerer, whose name was Bobby, lived far away from where the brothers had grown up, and he did not know that Dean was coming, so he was not ready when Dean arrived.  He promised help readily, though, for that’s what sorcerers do, and he went through all his magic books looking for a cure for what had happened to Sam._

_Days passed while Dean waited, growing impatient and afraid._

_One day, while Dean stood in the yard, he thought he heard a voice calling his name, but he dismissed it as the wind and he pretended he’d heard nothing._

_The next day, the voice grew louder, and Dean knew that it was Sam, wondering where Dean had gone._

_“I have to go,” he said to the sorcerer, but the sorcerer said only, “Demons lie.”  And Dean waited._

_Weeks passed, and the voice grew more insistent, its words summoning Dean home.  The voice reminded Dean what he’d promised his father._

_“I have to go,” he insisted more strongly, but the sorcerer only shook his head and said, “Demons lie.”_

_So Dean stayed, though it felt like betrayal._

_A whole month had passed since Dean had left the great forest behind when Bobby came out of his house and handed Dean a sheet of paper on which ancient words in an alien tongue were written._

_“Say these words to your brother to undo the wolf in him,” the sorcerer said._

_And Dean, thankful, ran all the way home with the paper clutched in his hand._

_It was a long journey, fraught with danger, for in the time he had been gone, the forest had filled up with all manner of evil things._

_In the very center of the darkness, he saw his brother Sam calling out to him from their cabin clearing._

_Dean raced into the clearing, a smile on his face, the words of the spell already falling from his lips, but when Sam turned to look at him, he realized he was too late._

_The wolf had all of Sam now._

_“I called for you,” Sam said, but there was nothing in his eyes of the brother now.  “You left me,” he said.  And though Dean said the magic words again and again, nothing happened except that the thing that had once been Sam laughed and laughed._

_Dean thought that he would die.  But the thing that had been his little brother only mocked him from the edge of the woods and said, “You failed, Dean.  You failed our father and you failed me.”_

_And then he was gone, swallowed by the darkness that had taken over the whole of the forest in which they had once played and loved and been brothers._

Beside me, Allie moves like she’s going to speak, and I put a hand on her knee.  I know what comes next.  So does Gene, who says nothing.  Even mother in the kitchen is quiet.  We all wait.

 

“And that’s the end of the story,” Grandfather says at last, as though it makes him tired to say it.

 

But Allie, who has not heard the story before, cannot keep still.

 

“Nuh-uh!” she says, slapping one little hand against her knee.  “There’s only happy endings, Grandfather,” she insists.

 

Something she says makes Grandfather smile, but it doesn’t reach his cloudy eyes, and that shiver I get goes right up my spine.

 

“Shush,” I say to Allie.  But a part of me wants to see what Grandfather will say.

 

“You want a happy ending, huh, Allie?” Grandfather asks.  He’s always treated her different than the rest of us.  She’s little and sickly and Mother says he’s got a sweet spot for her.

 

“Yeah!” she shouts, loud.

 

“Allie,” Mother warns from the kitchen, but Grandfather just turns his head in Mother’s direction and says, “That’s alright.”

 

But when he looks back at us, it’s like he can actually see us—or through us.  There’s something in his eyes that makes me hold my breath, and I can’t even say what it is except that I don’t like it.  Suddenly, I wonder where he heard this story first, and part of me wishes I could get up and leave.

 

_Dean didn’t die that day._

_He didn’t die the next day, either._

_He stayed in the clearing until it became obvious that he wouldn’t be able to hold off the evil all alone.  So he packed up the few things he had and headed for the world of regular men, hoping that Bobby could help him again._

_What he found when he got there was that the outside world was in a lot of trouble, too, and there were others like him trying to stop the spread of evil._

_Though his heart was broken and he did not believe he’d live long, Dean threw himself into the fight._

_He thought he might someday see Sam again and maybe have a chance to fix him, and he asked Bobby to look for a way through magic to bring his brother back._

_Bobby always insisted that once Sam was evil, he’d always be evil, but Dean didn’t believe it.  He never gave up hope.  In his heart, he regretted ever leaving Sam behind, regretted ever forgetting his father’s words, even for a minute.  He grew bitter in his regret and soon people didn’t want much to do with him._

_Still, he hunted, because that’s what he knew how to do, and the world needed him, now more than ever._

_He heard word that Sam was leading the evil things, but he wouldn’t believe it was his brother._

_He heard word that creatures calling themselves Sam’s disciples had taken to possessing people and making them do bad things.  But always, always he believed he could get his brother back._

_Then, one day when Dean was growing old, when he thought that he might just find a place in the forest to lay down like his father had and end his struggle, he saw Sam again._

Allie jumps in place, like she’s going to blurt something out, and I clap my hand over her mouth to stop her from shouting.  Grandfather waits a minute, watching, and when Allie stops squirming, he keeps going.

 

_Sam wasn’t the same as Dean remembered.  And he was, in a way.  He hadn’t changed much.  He wasn’t older.  Unlike Dean, he didn’t have any grey in his hair, and his smile was just the same, wide, but it didn’t reach his eyes, where the biggest difference lived.  He was the wolf all over, especially in his eyes, and Dean knew then that Bobby had been right.  His brother wasn’t coming back._

_“I’m sorry,” Dean said to Sam.  He did not raise the gun he’s carrying._

_And for a second, it’s Sam again, his brother, who in his eyes carried a gleam of the little boy whose back Dean would stroke to drive away the nightmares._

_He didn’t say a word, but he lets Dean leave.  The wolves that had surrounded Dean slid back and let him walk away._

_Tears clouded Dean’s eyes so that he could not see, and when he reached the world once more, he realized that he was blind._

“Grandfather?” I start, knowing that I won’t finish the question.  Those unseeing eyes find mine.  Beside me, even Allie is still.  

 

“Let’s finish the supper dishes,” Mother calls from the kitchen, and Gene and Allie get up and go out there.

 

Grandfather gets up from his chair and clutches the head of his walking stick with knobby, shaking fingers.

 

“I’ll walk you home,” I say.

 

“I’m not afraid of the dark,” Grandfather answers.

 

“Me either,” I assert, brave with his still-strong arm beneath my fingers.

 

“You should be,” he says solemnly.  

 

I nod, though I know that he can’t see me.

 

“What happened to Sam, Grandfather?” I ask him now that we’re outside under the cold sky.  It’s filled with stars from edge to edge. It seems like a time for telling secrets, and I know I’m old enough now to know.

 

Somewhere a wolf howls.  We live on the very edge of a forest, and they sometimes roam the woods.  We aren’t allowed in them at night, though Mother says there’s nothing to fear there now.

 

Grandfather smiles and looks right at me, but he’s seeing someone else.

 

“You can hear him if you listen,” he says, nodding toward the woods and the howls that are taken up hill to hill as the wolves join their voices.

 

One call is louder than the others and different, not really a wolf at all.

 

The smile on Grandfather’s face grows old.  The lines around his mouth and eyes deepen.  I am sorry I asked.

 

“Go home,” he says to me.  “And watch out for your brother and sister.”

 

“Okay,” I whisper.  “I will.”

 

But I don’t go right away.  Instead, I stand there and watch him walk down the road toward his house.  He has to pass into the shadows of the trees that shade the road, and as he’s swallowed by the darkness, that same strange howl sounds, closer than before and closing.

  
I shiver and swallow something hard and choking in my throat, and when I cannot take it anymore, I bolt for my house, bursting through the front door into the warmth and safety of my living room.

 

From the kitchen, Mother calls out, “Jimmy, is that you?”

 

I can’t explain why I want to cry, and I can’t keep the tears from my voice, so I say nothing.

 

“Did you walk Grandfather home?” she asks, coming to the door between the kitchen and the living room.

 

I nod, still unable to speak.

 

“Is everything all right?”

 

I nod again and go to my room, where I turn out the lights and lay in the dark, listening.  I do not hear the howl again.

 

The next day, I am not surprised when my Mother tells me, voice gentle with grief, that Grandfather has died in the night.


End file.
